Ag Food and Resource Economics Summer Experiences

This week was pretty good for me. On Monday I got promoted to an account manager. It’s really crazy to me that in only after 3 weeks, I got promoted. This promotion gave me a lot more responsibilities. Some of the responsibilities are small office stuff like making copies and making sure we have enough supplies. The bigger responsibilities are training and teaching entry level employees and in the future running meeting, planning events, and interviewing potential candidates. I trained 2 people this week in the field and one of them did well enough that he can begin what’s call his solo push. This means that he gets him own territory and will go out on his own next week. It’s still crazy to me that I am able to train someone to where they are good enough to go out by them-self, and soon they will be able to train someone else, and I have only been doing this for 4 weeks.

The best part about the company is the fact that everything has a system. What we do everyday is built on a system so I can theoretically go to any location and still be successful. Also the way you get promoted is based on a system and not experience. You need to get the right numbers in order to be promoted. There are people that have been working for 3 weeks longer than I have and I got promoted before they did, because I stayed motivated and worked harder than they did.

I am really excited for the rest of this internship because I am learning a lot about sales, marketing, and management. Also next week I was selected to go to Grand Rapids and work in the territories down their so I’m really excited about that.

What an amazing experience…. My internship at Ball Horticultural is over and I’m amazed at how fast the 10 weeks flew by. Looking back, it is amazing how much I did and accomplished. I think that perhaps my favorite part was being treated as an actual employee at Ball where people listened to and respected my opinions and ideas.

Presenting on my project to the Executive Committee and upper management was extremely intimidating yet exciting. I was able to present on a real project that was useful to my industry, and I had a passion for a presentation that I haven’t ever experienced in school. It was also very interesting to listen to the other interns presentations regarding their projects. I was blown away by everyone’s presentation skills and fresh ideas for the company.

Perhaps the one thing that I will carry away with me is the hug I received from Anna Ball, the CEO, on my last day. It sounds simple, but I had some very insightful conversations with her over the course of the summer. That hug before I left showed that she wasn’t a hard-to-reach CEO, but a real person who cared about me and the other interns and the future of the industry. She was real, down-to-earth, and showed me that a good business leader should be approachable to everyone in the company.

This is that last and final week of my internship here with Kroger and I am running on fumes, they really know how to cram as much information and events as they can during this 10 week program. For Our last week we just finished out volunteer event with Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor and raised over $7000. After the event it was full swing into finishing up our PowerPoint’s that we will present to our executives on Thursday. On Thursday we will also find out if we have received the $1500 scholarship and a job offer from Kroger as well. We couldn’t be more stressed with these presentations coming out and just trying to memorize as much of them as we can and know them like the back of our hands. Overall it has been a great experience and an even better internship to have, I am looking forward to finally being able to relax for this last week and a half before school starts up again!!!

This was the last week in the Kroger internship and I am sad it went by as fast as it did. The last week was one of my favorite weeks in the internship for a number of reasons. We had our volunteer event which we were able to raise $7,000 dollars for C.S Mott Children’s Hospital. This money will go toward pediatric cancer research to help the children and families battling this disease. It took a lot of hard work and dedication, however seeing how we impacted the community, every minute was worth it.

After the volunteer event, it was time to get back to work. The interns found out that our presentations to executives was moved from Friday to Thursday morning. Now was the time to buckle down and practice for the days that followed. Although the presentations were moved up, we were able to have that Friday off. This internship experience has been incredible; however, I’m looking forward to the ten days I have to relax before heading back to Michigan State University.

I want to thank Ken Coleman for giving us his wisdom in this industry and allowing me to learn from him. He made the internship an experience I will never forget. I want to also thank all the interns who were a part of the internship. I have memories with each one of you and am so happy I had the opportunity to work with you all.

This week is the last week of the internship. It is bittersweet because the internship has been so much fun, but I am also ready to be done with it. Our volunteer project was a huge success as we raised over $7,000 in 6 weeks to fund pediatric cancer at Mott Children’s Hospital. This was truly an experience that I will be proud of for the rest of my life. It was so much fun working with the kids and helping them out.

Our final project presentations will be on Thursday. I am nervous but also excited to show the executives what we have worked on throughout the semester. Hopefully they are impressed with our idea and they implement it throughout the stores, because I think that would be something really special.

This internship has been so much fun and I am extremely grateful for having this opportunity. I would definitely recommend this internship to another student because you do a lot of work and learn so many different skills. You also have a chance to impact lives through your volunteer event.

During my final week here at Kroger the main focus was the volunteer event as it finally arrived after much preparation. Each intern had specific goals and all were very important such as hanging up lights to light the path, preparing the food tables, manning the water stations, and placing signs for runners to follow the path. The event went well as planned due to all of our hard efforts and how much time we put into it. Aside from the event we are hard at work on each of our individual group projects as we present at the end of this week. With our presentations near completion, we have been practicing to present that way the chance of errors is very slim.

Overall, this internship experience has been fantastic, the connections I have made and the places we have been have all been very eye opening. The in-store experience has been my favorite part of the internship as this is where I was able to get a hand on experience and see how the in-store environment differs from the corporate environment. I am proud of what I have done here at Kroger during these past ten weeks and will be very sad when we all say our final goodbyes. In the future Kroger would definitely be somewhere I would want to work as their family type work environment is something that suits me well. (The picture below was taken at the volunteer event that the interns hosted.)

This was my last week of my internship and was a good last week. This week i did a bunch of meetings to learn about how we purchase and did a little project on creating new promotions for our counter. We came up with some promotions for greenlee that with every 100 dollars of purchase you get a free greenlee tool pack. This week also was a reflection of the internship so we basically did whatever segment of the internship we wanted. I decided to learn more about inside and outside sales. I shadowed some inside sales this week and learned how quotes and orders are compiled. I also went on a outside sales call where we met up with the customer had lunch and discussed some business and basically kept tabs on the relationship with the customer. Although we werent exactly trying to sell them anything, by keeping good relations, we can have their business in the future. Reflecting on this internship, it was a great learning experience and a lot of fun. Although i’m not going to pursue full time with them, the experiences and skills i learned from this internship was unparalleled. I learned much about how the real world works and how a business operates. I learned a bunch of accounting principles from dissecting profit and loss statements and learned a bunch about purchasing and pricing theory. Its safe to say this internship has made me more prepared for getting a full time job after i graduate college.

The internship is over. After a long week of doing wage surveys I am definitely happy with my whole experience. To define what a wage survey is, its when you go to your stores competitors in the area and ask for their starting wage and the positions that they are hiring. It was a long process and I had to do surveys for 12 stores in 2 and a half days.

The stores that I was doing these surveys were in district 106 which were in the cities of Troy, Farmington, Redford, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, and Detroit. This was a lot of driving on my own. The best part of these surveys was the last day. I saved the Detroit location for last because I knew that it was next to the Renaissance Center. So for lunch I was able to eat at the Panera Bread in the food court and still ask the fast food places for the wage surveys. It was a beautiful day to eat outside next to the river.

This whole internship was a wonderful experience for me. I learned a lot about customer service and management techniques while working at Speedway. For the last day I was given a book from the Regional Manager, the book is titled How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I heard great things about this book and will definitely read it before going back to school. The nice thing was being offered to come back to Speedway to train to become a District Manager next summer. The company gave me an educational leave so I can come back to Speedway without all of the store training. As I said before, I was very happy with my whole experience at the company and I will consider coming back next summer.

This week was my last week with Target. 10 weeks went by so fast and I can’t believe it! In other news, this past Tuesday I was offered a full time position as an Executive Team Lead with Target in the Metro Detroit area post graduation. There were also talks of doing an extended internship during the school year at a store near MSU’s campus. This would be great because then I would be able to continue to work on things I need to with Target and also make some money while up at school. This internship has been a great experience for me and I absolutely loved the store and team that I was placed with. I am looking forward to hearing more from my intern leader about the job offer and I am excited to be with Target in the future.

I cannot believe how fast these 10 weeks have gone by! I have learned so much and have grown so much as a person. I am very thankful to be put in such a wonderful store! Everyone was so friendly and welcomed me with open arms. As sad as I am to be leaving this store and going back to school, I was asked if I would like to continue this internship throughout my senior year. I am very excited to be coming back during the holiday season to help out my store!

Along with being offered and extended internship program, I received a full time offer as an Executive Team leader, post graduation! I am very excited to be staying with this company. I truly believe that I have found the right fit! I said it from the beginning that I had a good feeling about this company and I was right!

I am thankful to be given this opportunity to not only intern with Target, but to continue my career with this company. I am excited for what I have in store with myself and this company!

Wrapping up this week was interesting for me. I finally received my last feedback and final review. It did not go as I had hoped. That being said, I was disappointed with the way I was treated the last week. Learning points with that are certainly seeing how not to act as a mentor or store leader.

I realized that I should have really observed the politics at the store I am located at. This would be a strong suggestion to anyone working in a large corporate business; learn the inner politics before making any moves. I made that mistake and was unable to turn it around. I do believe everything happens for a reason and was able to make an interesting connection with the guard who picks up our money.

Off the cuff, I mentioned that I am interested in commodity trading after he asked why I didn’t have keys and explaining I am an intern from MSU. He then laughed and said he didn’t think he’d ever meet someone that knew what that was or was actually interested. His brother who also graduated from MSU is a commodity trader. I asked if he would be willing to connect me and I gave him my contact information. Not three hours later, he sent me a message saying he spoke with his brother and that they were opening up an analyst position in the near future. He said to forward him my resume and he would take a look at it first before they even open the position officially.

Really shows how having simple genuine conversations with people pay off. It wasn’t the first time I spoke with this particular guard, but I was always friendly with him, greeted him with a smile, asked about how he was doing and showed genuine interest in who he was, and always thanked him for his service.

I did really enjoy my time this summer with Target. I felt like I learned a lot, met some great people, and was kept on my toes at all times. It was faced paced and I loved that. There were no two days that were the same; far from it.

I am very excited to get back to school and continue to work on being a better leader, networker, and connector.